


an aching (the rest of your life)

by insufferable



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Inspired by Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, M/M, my clown shoes are squeaking in the background, very LOOSELY inspired by eternal sunshine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-07-02
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:40:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25034839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/insufferable/pseuds/insufferable
Summary: Shitty was a good bro, so of course he'd support Jack going through Erasure surgery. It came as no surprise that he wanted to forget about his past with Parson, now that he was really making a name for himself in the league.Shitty just wished he'd had the foresight to predict the Zimmermann-Parson get-together now that they were playing in the same league again, even if neither of them knew it was a reunion.
Relationships: Kent "Parse" Parson/Jack Zimmermann, Larissa "Lardo" Duan/Shitty Knight, Shitty Knight & Jack Zimmermann
Comments: 16
Kudos: 55





	an aching (the rest of your life)

**Author's Note:**

> "I love that we can fail at love and continue to love.  
> I love writing this and not knowing what I'll love next."  
> \- Alex Dimitrov, "Love".
> 
> "If I could have done it all again, I would have loved you better. But I could not have loved you more."  
> \- Sue Zhao, “I loved you in all the ways that I could”.
> 
> "It probably won't get easier, just easier to hide, prepare for an aching the rest of your life."  
> \- The Front Bottoms, "Looking Like You Just Woke Up".
> 
> "You didn't know me at thirteen"  
> "I really wish I did"-  
> Jesse Eisenberg and Andrew Garfield at TSN press tour.

Shitty knew, alright, he knew that he could be a pretty oblivious guy. But the night that Jack had called him up for their weekly Skype call, smile on his beautiful little hockey robot face for the first time since the Falconers had began their losing streak, he was too happy (and also high) to question his mood.

It was at the tail-end of a shitty week for both of them, and, to be honest, he hadn’t wanted to ruin the spell. Not seeing his best friend every single day for the first time in four years, not being able to light up a blunt in Jack's room and get him to stroke his flow while they shot the shit and Shitty provided deliberately inaccurate running commentary to whatever WWII documentary Jack was watching now- that shit weighed down on a guy. Why would he want to ruin the mood by interrogating Jack on what had put him in such a good mood, when he had brushed the question off?

Jack had been struggling in his first year at the NHL, and Shitty had been- well, not fitting in, to put it kindly, at Harvard. He missed Lardo (god, did he miss Lardo), and the rest of his Samwell bros; he missed Ransom and Holster's freaky psychic twin communication, Bitty's stress-baking, even arguing with Dex over the morning paper (which usually resulted in Shitty trying and failing to refrain from calling anyone who used Fox News as a source a sociopath); he regretted cutting off his flow, and he definitely regretted watching those YouTube compilations of Jack and Mashkov being "the cutest bromance in the NHL" (as if Shitty could be replaced).

To make matters worse, he couldn’t stop thinking about the little form he’d left at the bottom of his suitcase, tucked neatly between pairs of folded underwear and socks where no one would look. Who could blame Shitty wanting to take a break from his worries?

See, Shitty’d had to learn a lot about the legality of Erasure surgery over the years. In fact, it had pretty much been a cornerstone of his Mental Health and the Law freshman year module (which he’d aced); case-studies on those who had gotten accomplices Erased, permanently, from their mind, in order to protect themselves in court, and the grey areas where there existed a legal precedent for telling someone they’d undergone treatment. He’d even worked as a volunteer last summer accompanying those who were going in alone for an Erasure.

He considered himself a pretty open-minded guy, and fuck if there weren’t some family members he’d pay to forget, especially around the holidays. Still, none of that had prepared him for the shock of Jack, his best friend slash platonic life partner, asking Shitty to bring him in for surgery towards the end of his rookie year, after he'd won the Cup, even if the object of his surgery didn't come as any surprise; his name, in fact, was written on that form, in beautiful legalese; “this document hereby states that I, Jack Zimmermann, in the presence of my witness, Byron S. Knight, have chosen to forget Kent Parson”, etc., etc.

Somehow, between the Erasure surgery and Jack’s sudden upswing in mood after playing the Aces, Shitty hadn’t guessed at the inevitability of the Zimmermann-Parson no-look-one-timer get-together reunion (or whatever the fuck they wanted to call it), now that they were playing in the same league. Somehow, Shitty didn’t think about the limitations of the tiny pool of closeted professional hockey players that Jack could risk hooking up with it, if he so chose; he guessed that this was his penance for that lack of foresight; Jack wanting to introduce him to a flushed Kent Parson the night after one of the Falconer’s games, for seemingly the first time.

With Shitty living so close to Jack now, it had been easy for them to meet up for a game, especially when Jack had told Shitty he had news for him (all good, apparently); Shitty had felt electrified watching Jack play his heart out on the ice, but mostly he’d been curious about what Jack had to tell him that justified making such a big deal out of meeting up, without the rest of their Samwell bros.

It was as Jack steered Shitty towards his car towards the end of the night, still running on a high from the Falconer’s win (wins which were still coming rarely enough, even after their Cup win last year, to justify the rest of the boys going out for the night while Jack begged off to show his college buddy around town) that Shitty began to freak out.

Fuck whatever Jack had said about good news- the second Jack was telling him “not to freak out, it’s no big deal, but-“ Shitty was on tenterhooks; hearing that things would be okay from Jack was a surefire way to get anyone worried- but especially with the way he’d been acting since the game had ended; little things adding up, like the way he’d checked his phone every few seconds (the Samwell groupchat may have been pretty vocal in their support for Jack, but Shitty was sure even Jack could predict the same “Get ‘em, Jack” or “Nice one out there tonight, J-man” texts from every team member), to the way he’d almost (and here Shitty shuddered at the thought), almost seemed to rush out of the arena tonight, instead of stand around talking strategy and analysing new plays with the rest of his team, the way he had back at Samwell, accidentally leaving Shitty waiting outside until he poked his head through the door, half naked and with two twin spots of red blush high on his cheeks, practically begging to be chirped, and told him he’d outside in two minutes.

Shitty tried to put on his best conflict resolution slash terminal illness talk slash stop Jack from joining a cult face. He’d heard that there were some Scientologists in the NHL, but surely they couldn’t have gotten their claws into Jack already, unless- oh, God, they were aiming to convert the Zimmermanns, weren’t they? Shitty blamed Mashkov. Poor Jackie, he’d barely gotten out of those changing rooms alive, and now, as they got into the car, Jack would pour his heart out to him, and -

“Uh, Shits, I told you I had some good news to share with you, right? I hope, well, uh, I know you won’t see me any differently when I tell you this, but… Shits, I’ve been seeing someone. Uh, a male someone. For a while now,” Jack finished, giving his best dorky smile to Shitty, a sheepish look in his eyes, which, damn, Jackie, no need to turn them on full blast tonight. Shitty was just a mere mortal, he didn’t need those lasers pointed at him. Or, maybe he did, he’d just set the movement to legalise cannabis back another decade with his attention span (or lack thereof).

“Mr. Zimmermann, excuse me, did you just say you were dating someone?” Shitty exclaimed, laughing with relief as he slung his arms around Jack’s shoulders and pulled him in for a tight hug. Shitty's mind hadn't gone to the worst-case scenarios as he cheered for Jack during the game, but with everything Jack had told him about his past- especially in the lead up to his Erasure surgery- and the stoic, media-trained-since-birth manner with which Jack carried himself off the ice that gave him the undeserved reputation of hockey robot, Shitty would be lying if he said it hadn't crossed his mind that Jack could've been hiding something much, much worse than a boyfriend.

“If you weren’t a taken man, Jackie, I would plant one on you right here and now,” Shitty exclaimed, voice muffled into the fabric of Jack’s shirt where he could feel Jack’s pulse racing. Jack had come out to him as bi after his disastrous run-in with Kent at their Epikegster, but as far as Shitty knew, he’d never really expressed an interest in another dude in the time he'd known Shitty, and he'd made it pretty clear to Shitty that he wasn’t planning on coming out this early in his career- not until he’d had a few Cups to speak for himself as a player first, anyway- but Shitty guessed that wouldn't be a problem anymore, if he found someone to come out with.

Jack pushed him away fondly, putting Shitty into a headlock that pretty quickly turned into Shitty rubbing his head into Jack’s hand for some of the good ol’ fashioned BFF cuddles he’d missed so much.

“Seriously, man, this is awesome, I- fuck, I knew you weren’t in a cult!”

“Uh, thanks, Shits?” 

“For real, man, you’ve seemed so happy, recently; it means a lot that you told me. You know I’ve got your back no matter what, dude. Who’s the lucky guy?”

Jack’s face, if anything, seemed to get impossibly softer. Jackie was unmistakably his mother’s son at the best of times, but right after a game, he looked so angelic, downright (ugh) dewy with sweat, his whole face pink-tinged, that you couldn’t help but think he should've followed in Alicia's steps, rather than Bob's. As Jack finally pushed Shitty away, for real this time, and started the car up, his sweet, drowsy looking mouth pulled up on one side with a smile, turning to Shitty for a second before they pulled out of the Falconer’s parking lot, now almost deserted.

“You might know him. He's, uh, Kent Parson.”

Shitty barely suppressed a choking noise, suddenly feeling as though he were on the stands being cross-examined, or in the headlights of a goon back at Samwell, seconds away from a bad hit. He could feel his face flushing, but, luckily enough, a lifetime of celebrating Thanksgiving and Christmas with the deeply conservative Knights had drilled into him the ability to keep a steady voice and facial expression, even if he was dying on the inside.

“Um… Wow, man, I… Yeah, I’ve heard of him, whoof, what a player! That’s- another hockey player, huh! I’m so happy for you, dude,” he managed to get out. Maybe Jack had been indoctrinated into a cult after all; that would explain the blissful look on his face as he started talking about-

“Kenny, well, I’m not- you know I’m not too good at the whole emotion thing. And usually it’s pretty hard, when I’m getting to know people, uh, especially other players-“

And here Shitty remembers their freshman year at Samwell, where Jack had been ignored by the team and made the subject of countless blind items in the Swallow (thinly veiled references to washed-up junkie jocks, huh, I wonder who that could be) until Shitty finally wrote a strongly worded letter to (read: threatened to take legal action against) the editor, endearing himself to Bob and Alicia forever. Not to mention some of the guys on the team taking bets on how fucked up Jack would get at the next Kegster, how quickly it would take for him to fall off the wagon.

“But, he, he just looked past that, man. After the All Stars Weekend, I guess we started talking, and we just- clicked? Have you ever met someone and it feels like you’ve grown up with them? Or at least, you wish you did? I don’t know, Shitty; we were on the same team in the Q, but that’s all a blur to me with the- the meds, I guess? Deadspin thought we were some sort of rivalry-turned-friendship story, like dad and Mario, but you know how they spin these things; anyway, we got talking, properly, for the first time, and we just- we clicked. And he’s- I think he’s been pretty good for me, I- “

Jack cut himself off, hands nervously tapping at the steering wheel while the car stalled at the lights. He risked a glance over at Shitty, who tried to keep his face as friendly and supportive as possible. 

“Shits,” he said, voice soft now, accent coming out strong like it always did when he was anxious, “I’m sorry, dude, I shouldn’t have said anything. I know things with you and Lardo are-“

Shitty basically swallowed his tongue in an attempt to get Jack off that topic of conversation. How things were going with Lardo was Strictly Off Limits, but Shitty guessed tonight was the night for impossible things to occur. Luckily Byron S. Knight was full of bullshit, another perk of being a child of generational wealth, mouthing off while the cogs of his mind worked to figure out how Jack could be taken in by Kent Parson again- who, up till now, learning that he was totally taking advantage of his freshly Erased best friend, he'd considered a pretty chill dude.

“No, nonono, shit, man, that’s fucking ‘swawesome. Dude, I’m just happy to see you happy, right? Ignore me.” Shitty swallowed. “Do, uh, Does anyone else know? Your mom, or Bob?”

Surely Bob and Alicia would've talked some sense into Jack if they knew. But how could Shitty break it to Jack that his new relationship was built on a lie when he looked the happiest he'd been in months?

As they finally pulled up to Jack's apartment, the trees whipping past outside so green they bled in with the sky and the sidewalk to create a totally featureless cityscape, Jack looked bashful.

"No, you're the first person I told, Shits. And, uh. Kent's actually waiting upstairs to meet you."

**Author's Note:**

> god i am probably the only person remotely interested in this fic but i have like 10k written about jackparse- they make me feel like *jenny slate scream* and motivated me to write my first fic ever!!! anyway thanks for reading, if anyone makes it this far:)


End file.
